"History tells different story on growth woes" ... by gimleteye

The weekend editorial from the Key West Citizen is well worth reading in Miami-Dade. Although we are the sprawl capital of the Americas, the limited terrain of the Florida Keys provided the state with its first taste of growth management conflicts. It was my experience fighting land use battles in the Keys in the late 1980's that prepared me for twenty years of scrapping here. You didn't need to be clairvoyant to predict that land speculators and the assorted interests of the Growth Machine would run the economy off the rails. This view may gain traction with the release of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that blames-- as I have written both here on Eyeonmiami and Counterpunch-- that "the ownership society" and its hucksters bear full responsibility for the housing market crash and subsequent carnage. Writ small in the Florida Keys, the damage from the housing boom and bust is astounding. But instead of a fair reckoning, what the Florida legislature and Gov. Rick Scott are preparing to do is to eviscerate the one management agency that is charged with supervising growth management, the Florida Department of Community Affairs. In their bankrupt world view, "regulations" are responsible for the economic crisis. This is the point to pick up and read in the Key West Citizen, "Before the new kids on the block get a chance to rewrite history, we want to defend Florida's Department of Community Affairs (DCA)." (click, 'read more')

This week, in an appearance before Associated Press editors and reporters, Gov. Rick Scott said he hasn't yet decided about merging the DCA with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

The governor's transition team pitched that idea as a way to streamline the state regulatory process and speed up Florida's economic recovery.

Inherent in the argument for abolishing DCA is the belief that the agency has held back development, costing the state construction jobs.

Anyone who's spent any time living or even driving through Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, or that interstate snarl that is the Orlando-Tampa-St. Pete axis would laugh out loud.

Held back? Who are they kidding?

In fact, before moving into the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee, Scott lived in Naples. Naples, along with neighboring Fort Meyers, serves as a classic warning about the impact of uncontrolled over-development.

Acres of subdivided land sit idle, a few stray houses serve as testament to rampant greed. Banks and car dealerships went under, commercial office space sits empty and roads to nowhere dead-end at subdivisions that never broke ground beyond the fancy sales office out front.

Lee County has the highest rate of foreclosures in the eastern United States.

If the DCA was such an effective brake on Florida development, how does one explain all those foreclosed homes and empty commercial properties that pockmark the state?

Here's what the governor told the media in Tallahassee this week: "We clearly need growth management, but we've got to do growth management in a way that is not merely slowing things down and killing jobs."

There it is again - rewriting history to fit the story line.

It wasn't the DCA "slowing things down" that killed Florida's construction jobs, it was easy-money financing that allowed developers and builders to borrow obscene amounts of money and speculate on the premise of ever-increasing real estate riches.

Buyers were led down the garden path to no-down financing on loans they couldn't afford, especially after teaser rates morphed into serious money.

And everyone bet that real estate was an ever-upward spiral, a mistake that proved the downfall of the whole circus.

The fast money to finance this economic engine dried up - that's what killed all those jobs in construction, mortgage finance, real estate sales.

Don't blame the DCA. They were the folks holding the rope, trying to keep the elephants from stampeding through the Big Top.

Tom Pelham, the DCA's outgoing secretary, didn't stick around for Scott's swearing in to exit his threatened agency.

Before the new players rewrite Florida history, here's what Pelham said in defense of DCA: "The same basic growth-management system that is under attack now was in place during one of Florida's longest and biggest economic boom periods.

"DCA and the growth-management system did not prevent the real-estate bubble, they did not cause the bubble to burst and they will not prevent recovery."